Biden administration announces major actions to tackle Russian efforts to influence 2024 election

(CNN) — The Biden administration announced a sweeping set of actions to tackle a major Russian government-backed effort to influence the 2024 US presidential election on Wednesday, including unveiling criminal charges against two Russian nationals, sanctions on 10 individuals and entities, and the seizure of 32 internet domains.

At Russian President Vladimir Putin’s direction, three Russian companies used fake profiles to promote false narratives on social media, US Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said in a statement. Internal documents produced by one of those Russian companies show one of the goals of the propaganda effort was to boost the candidacy of Donald Trump or whoever emerged as the Republican nominee for president, according to an FBI affidavit.

Separately, two employees of RT, the Russian state media network, were indicted in a US court for allegedly being part of a scheme that funneled nearly $10 million to set up and direct a Tennessee-based front company to produce online content aimed at sowing divisions among Americans, according to the Justice Department. The scheme targeted millions of American news consumers with what Attorney General Merrick Garland described as “hidden Russian government messaging.”

Taken together, the actions represent the Biden administration’s most significant public response yet to alleged Russian influence operations targeting American voters. After the US accused Iran of trying to hack both the Trump and Biden-Harris campaigns last month, Wednesday’s actions are a reminder that US officials continue to see Russia as a prominent foreign influence threat to November’s election, sources familiar with the matter said.

One of the three Russian companies allegedly behind the internet domains seized by the Justice Department is a company called Social Design Agency (SDA), which the Treasury Department previously sanctioned for allegedly running fake news sites in Europe on behalf of the Russian government.

CNN first reported on the pending US actions earlier Wednesday. The Russian disinformation operation is being laundered through both Americans and non-American voices, four sources told CNN.

A nearly 300-page FBI affidavit released on Wednesday describes the domain seizures and lays out a broad, Kremlin-backed effort to seed fake news stories to attack US politicians supporting Ukraine in the war against Russia and stoke tensions in US society.

Internal SDA documents cited in the affidavit, which appear to date to before Trump officially clinched the Republican nomination, say one of the “goals” of the company’s disinformation efforts was to “secure victory of a U.S. Political Party A candidate (Candidate A or one of his internal party opponents” in the 2024 election.

The documents included in the affidavit do not mention Trump by name, but the US intelligence community has said that Russia’s preferences for the presidential race also haven’t shifted since 2020, when Moscow conducted a range of influence operations in support of Trump and aimed at denigrating Joe Biden.

The SDA documents also propose targeting US voters in six swing states with disinformation, hitting on themes such as the “risk of job loss for white Americans” and the purported threat of crime from “Ukrainian immigrants,” according to the FBI affidavit.

Prosecutors in the indictment of two RT employees also describe an operation intended to fuel pro-Russian narratives, in part, by pushing content and news articles favoring Trump and others who the Kremlin deemed to be friendlier to its interests.

The unnamed Tennessee-based company that the Justice Department alleges was being funded by Russian operatives working as part of the Kremlin-orchestrated influence operation is Tenet Media, which is linked to right-wing commentators with millions of subscribers on YouTube and other social media platforms, according to a US official briefed on the matter.

Formerly known as Russia Today, RT runs television and online platforms around the world that advance the Kremlin’s agenda. The Justice Department forced RT America to register as a foreign agent in 2017 after US intelligence officials concluded that the media outlet contributed to Russian efforts to meddle in the 2016 election.

Wednesday’s announcements mark the second major effort by the Biden administration to blunt RT’s influence in as many months. In July, the Justice Department accused an RT employee of being involved in a scheme that used a network of about 1,000 social media accounts to pose as US residents to spread disinformation about the Ukraine war and other topics. US officials accuse the Kremlin of financing the scheme; a Kremlin spokesperson denied the allegation.

Asked for comment, an RT spokesperson did not respond to the substance of the allegations, and instead emailed mocking comments including, “2016 called and it wants its clichés back.”

CNN was not immediately able to reach Social Design Agency for comment.

A growing number of foreign operatives have attempted to influence US elections since Russia’s 2016 activity, which included hacking the Democratic National Committee and leaking documents aimed at undercutting Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

In the 2024 election, Iran’s alleged embrace of a similar hack-and-leak playbook that Russia used in 2016 has US officials on heightened alert. In June, a group of Iranian government-linked hackers successfully targeted the Trump campaign, stole internal campaign documents and shared them with news organizations. The hackers breached the email account of longtime Trump ally Roger Stone to target campaign staff, CNN has reported.

US officials are also keeping a close eye on China, which US officials and private experts say uses a vast set of online accounts to also target US voters. Chinese leader Xi Jinping told US President Joe Biden that China would not interfere in the 2024 US presidential election when the two men met last November, CNN previously reported.

But any foreign or domestic attempts to sow discord during the US election and shape voters’ opinions don’t change the fact that the voting process is very difficult to tamper with and protected by layers of defenses. There is no evidence of successful efforts — foreign or domestic —to swing an American election by changing vote tallies.

An estimated 97% of registered voters in the 2024 US election will cast their ballot in a jurisdiction with a verified paper record — adding to transparency around the vote, Jen Easterly, director of the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, told reporters this week.

“Election infrastructure has never been more secure,” Easterly said.

This story has been updated with additional developments.

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